


Cherry Bloom

by coffeethyme4me



Category: White Collar
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-15
Updated: 2010-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:54:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeethyme4me/pseuds/coffeethyme4me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diana falls for El after a break-up.  That's okay with the Burkes.  And Neal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherry Bloom

Diana's plane got in in the early evening, and she smiled hugely at Peter standing there waiting at the security check point. She held her arms out before she even got within ten feet. It was good to see him. No longer her old boss, he had become in the months after, a great friend. A confidant. He and El.

When her relationship went south, they were there for her. It took some wine, some black and white movies, a few nights in their guest room, too much chocolate. It had taken long hours of crying and talking and crying some more.

In the end, she'd felt both relieved and sad to have to return to her loverless life in D.C. after a week in their warm house. All she would have left was the work. She had stood in their living room with her bags. Peter had held her tight. El had held her then, too. El had held her longer, lush body pressed in full against her lean one. Her lips had briefly met the side of Diana's neck. "You'll find someone," she'd said. And then she'd pulled away.

It became a thing. Every month, she'd fly up. Although, she wound up just staying a night or two. There were a lot of laughs, some fantastic dinners, some good wine, great friendship.

Neal was often present, and she found she liked him quite a lot. He just found a way to worm his sweet little way into your tough and honed crevices, like water between rocks, until you broke for him. She had to wonder if his influence was partly responsible for how relaxed Peter seemed, how laid back, sprawled in the dining chair, actually sipping some wine and cracking a joke. Peter's smile was different. She knew being the boss had meant he lacked friends. Neal seemed to have gotten around that rule, like he got around so many others, too.

Diana enjoyed her time over at the Burkes, away from her bachelor apartment life. Her dinners for one, take-out, sitcoms for company, and files of work on the coffee table. She really liked El's cooking and her easy smile. To her dismay, Diana found herself, after a sip too much Shiraz, staring hard at El's mouth when she laughed. She chalked it up to inebriation and a rebound mentality. She felt foolish; like she was 16 again and going for all the straight girls like they were candy. She even imagined that El's eyes sparkled when they met hers, that El licked her lips more slowly, crossed and recrossed her legs more frequently.

Diana found herself doing that dance a nervous butch does around the femme: trying very hard to be funny, make her laugh, flirting a bit too hard. She felt her voice deepen a little with wine and languor. Her eyes were always on El when she told a dirty joke. El always stared right into her. Until she threw her head back and laughed, her breasts quivering in her thin blouse, the upper curve of them pale and impossibly soft.

Diana felt the sudden desire to tug that shirt down to expose taut, red nipples. She got extraordinarily wet at the thought.

Diana had felt the guilt flood her veins when she met Peter's eyes and saw only the most trusting affection for her there. She was thinking of bowing out the next time they invited her up. She didn't want it to become a problem. The dense, hot feeling between her legs when El touched her hand on the table and squeezed told her it definitely could become one. Fast.

She had gone up to bed at 1am, certain she wouldn't be back. But what she saw at 2:30 on the kitchen counter when she came down for a glass of water changed her mind completely.

Neal was completely nude. He was on the counter top. Both hands were raised above his head, holding tightly to the cabinet hardware. His legs were hiked at impossible angles around the man that was fucking him severely. And that man was Peter Burke.

There was low grunting. That was Peter. There was some gorgeous high whining. That was definitely Neal. Peter jostled Neal on the counter with every sharp thrust, and from what Diana could see of Neal's face, he looked like he was in some seriously delicious pain. Peter was fully clothed while Neal was gloriously, dangerously bare. In the kitchen. Simply out in the open for any thirsty person to find.

See.

Watch.

And Diana was watching. It couldn't be helped. They were fucking by the light of the moon and they were beautiful.

Feeling too guilty to watch them come, Diana had turned and gone back upstairs. Then she'd dug her 9volt powered bullet out of her bag, gotten under the covers, removed everything from the waist down, and done herself hard, thinking of boys screwing on a kitchen counter top, and then, on a second wave, El arching her body into Diana's wide-open mouth and screaming.

…

She'd kissed everyone good-bye. They'd graduated to the lips. Peter's was always brief, completely restrained. El's…lingered. Neal just waved. His smile was kiss enough. Even though Diana couldn't help but remember the arousing bounce of his body as Peter pounded into him.

The flight home was too fast for real thinking. It was only good for memory. For the tattoo of Neal's shackled ankle swinging wantonly against Peter's shoulder to sink into her skin fully. For knowing, suddenly, that her ex-boss was getting some on the side and loving it from a beautiful young man who was obviously in love with him. She stared at the seat back in front of her and downed two Scotch and sodas in twenty minutes.

After another month of work, Stouffer's, and a painfully empty bed, Diana was fairly certain of what she would do.

And she had done it. She'd flown back up there, eaten El's duck l'orange, taken a walk with the family dog, and then she'd pulled Peter aside, out into the cool night air and the quiet backyard.

"I want to fuck your wife," she'd said.

And to her surprise, rather make that shock, he'd answered, "Good. She wants you, too."

Diana's eyes had gone wide. And then they'd sat down, like two adults, even though she felt like a kid, and worked out the details.

"You're…okay with that?"

"Well," Peter said, thoughtfully. He was not at all flippant, and that both set her mind at ease and made her palpitate with excitement. "We don't have what you'd call an open marriage or anything."

Diana nodded, remembering, vividly, the kitchen counter. "I saw you," she blurted.

He sighed. "You mean with Neal."

She nodded.

"You wanna beer?"

She nodded again, and Peter smiled.

El had gone to the store after dinner for more wine and something with chocolate frosting that she didn't have to bake. So they were alone under the greasy stars, getting not-quite drunk.

"How long?"

Peter had thumbed the rim of his beer bottle fondly. "A while. You know."

She didn't know, but that was okay.

Suddenly, he'd looked seriously freaked out. He leaned forward, frowning at her. "Now, I don't want… That is, I'm not…"

She caught on. "No!" she squeaked. "I mean, not that you're not…"

"You either!"

"No, it's just…"

"Yeah," he'd nodded. "Good." He took a long drink. "Good."

After an embarrassingly long pause, Diana said, "But I liked watching."

"You watched? I thought you just saw!" Peter laughed. Diana found herself laughing too, then harder when Peter asked with a serious squint, "How was I?"

"Ask Caffrey," Diana said, and Peter got a sweet, far-away look in his eye, almost forgetting her. So *he* was in love, too.

When El trapped her against the counter later that night and opened her soft mouth to be kissed, Diana had to wonder about the Burkes and their kitchen. That was only for a moment, of course, and then she pulled El's soft hips in hard and forced her mouth open with her tongue. Diana hadn't realized how hungry she'd been. El tasted dark like cocoa.

…

They got a hotel room for the first few times. Peter had insisted. He cited his alone time with Neal, waved his hand at any weak protests, and announced that it was final. It had been how Diana had wanted it, anyway. El alone in a room with a big bed and no clothes.

And Diana had been shocked at El's voraciousness. This was no reluctant straight-laced wife on a lark, squeamish about pussy. She dove for it. She licked and sucked and pushed in, peeled back, lapped and hummed and cursed and sweat.

She was the stuff that flew, giddy, out of Pandora's box.

Diana had expected a wilting, writhing, perpetually orgasmic bottom. She'd gotten a forceful, take-no-prisoners lover who Topped from the bottom and liked to give as good as she got.

Which was a beautiful start. But it wasn't until Diana took over and Topped the shit out of her that things really clicked into place and there was true, undeniable magic.

"God…" El had gasped when the cuffs snapped closed. "Oh my GOD…" she had moaned when the strap-on sank in all the way. And the climax Diana had while she fucked El up the ass almost blacked her out.

…

She wasn't sure who brought it up. Wasn't sure how it was decided. It could have been any of them. It could have been her for all she remembered. She just knew that on the first Saturday in April, before the cherry trees had bloomed, she found herself back in New York, upstairs in their bedroom, standing over their bed where El lay. Diana was in her bra and jeans and she was peeling El's panties down while Peter backed Neal into the wall by the headboard and started stroking the younger man's newly naked cock.

Her heart was flying like a fast thunder cloud. Her breath was caught in her throat. El's pubic hair was already wet, ebony in the meager light. El's eyes were lazy fires, her nipples hard and scared. El's gaze was on Diana's tensing stomach, then she arched her neck, looked back, and saw her husband rip Neal's crisp white dress shirt off his shoulders, one hand stripping it down the middle of his back. Neal's cock was cherry red and edible. But Peter just stroked it slowly. Neal was already in agony. El sighed, and looked at Diana. She opened her legs. She was like a pool of cream. Diana wanted to be in her. She wanted to be rough with this sweet thing laid out for her.

"I want your mouth," El said.

Diana felt her cunt throb and rush with slick. She knelt between El's legs, chewed inside near her knee and listened to El's breath hitch, the leg moving to try to get away, to open herself further. She was dripping on the sheets.

"Eat me…God, please…"

Diana sunk her face between El's thighs, the unbearable softness, the quivering, making her want to fuck. But by now, she knew she would do whatever Elizabeth wanted. She thought the words as she licked through the musky bush. Anything you want….

She knew this was a symptom, a tell-tale sign. She'd felt it with Christy, too: that intense need to fulfill all desires. It was an unhealthy affliction. A slow poison on her heart. But she licked El's pussy hungrily just the same.

She heard Neal cry out and glanced up to see him facing the wall, splendorously naked now, and Peter had his face in the man's perfect ass, rimming him. Diana groaned into El's pussy, lapping from the wet hole to her stony little clit. El shivered, biting her own hand.

"Peter…" Neal breathed. "Please. Lick up inside. Please…"

And his pathetic cry went right to Diana's cunt, and she licked inside El's, feeling it want to yawn open for her. It was so hot just inside the curve, and El thrashed her head back and forth. Diana ate back up the silky folds and flicked at her clit mercilessly.

Neal was starting to keen, and Peter was grunting like some kind of cave man while he ate Neal's ass. Diana cast her eyes up again, felt another flood between her legs at the sight of El's breasts swaying as she writhed. She was practically dying to do herself when she saw Peter slip two fingers into Neal's crack and force him open, still licking around his own digits.

"Wider," Peter demanded, and Neal's trembling legs opened, his back arched, and his ass took a third finger with effort.

"Fuck him," El sighed. "Fuck him, Peter."

Diana could hardly contain herself, and she reached up and took a tit in each hand, squeezing hard as she tortured El's clit with her tongue. El arched, her nipples like the pits of cherries, so hard and burnt red, sore-looking. She cried out to the ceiling, and came hard in Diana's mouth.

Moments later, El still coming, whining, twisting in Diana's unforgiving fingers, Peter positioned himself at Neal's pouty hole, an arm wrapped around his waist possessively, and drove, inch by solid inch, inside.

El rode the last shivering waves, stroked Diana's head, and then turned over, baring her beautiful, full ass and watching Peter undulate, his dick stroking in and out of Neal patiently.

"I'm not through with you," Diana told her, even though she whole-heartedly approved of the new position. El looked back at her with a smirk that practically twinkled, an elfin challenge, then she pillowed her head on her arms with a sigh, and Diana dug in her goodie bag for the right tools to deal with El's eager ass.

Peter glanced back at his wife and Diana. He held Neal close and watched Diana get out the slim, hot pink butt plug. He licked his lips and smiled at El, then he pressed wet lips to the back of Neal's neck and picked up the pace.

Diana just stood for a moment, watching El watching Peter and Neal. Her plush, inviting ass was too much to resist. The little creases under each cheek turned up like lascivious smiles: eat me, slap me, fuck me. Diana groaned, reached under El's thighs abruptly, and hauled her up onto her knees, ass in the air, making her choke on a gasp.

Now the dainty asshole was exposed, light fur drawing a line from its pucker down to the wet pussy. Diana bit her lip and hoped to God she wasn't falling.

Peter pulled out of Neal, apparently done with the slow tease of his cock stroking Neal's insides into a frenzy. He whirled Neal around, palmed his flushed face and his slobbering cock both. He pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and Neal pulsed his hips into it like a slut.

Diana tossed the toy onto the bed and sunk three fingers tight into El's pussy.

"Shit!" El yelled, and Peter and Neal both looked. Diana wore a proud smirk, fucking her fingers deep into El from behind.

"What are you waiting for, Neal?" Diana demanded on a whim. "Get on your knees and suck his cock."

She dug her fingers into El, knowing this was one of those moves that could drive her over the edge, (She herself could never take someone being that rough inside her.) and a wonderful bestial sound came from El's throat. Neal slipped down, eyes cast up reverently, and wrapped his mouth around the glistening head of Peter's large cock. Peter watched him, holding his head lightly, looking over his shoulder at El getting finger-fucked hard and then down at the soft lips stretching open for him.

"God, you can suck cock," Peter breathed, and Neal took him deeper, humming appreciatively. "You like how I taste?" Peter fairly whispered, closing his eyes. Diana could still taste his wife in her mouth. Neal groaned and choked and grunted and slurped around the cock. "You want me to come?" Peter asked.

"Not yet," El panted. Diana squeezed her jiggling ass, withdrew her fingers and slid them forward to her clit. "Oh God…Oh God…put it back in his ass," she whined, moving deliciously on Diana's hand. "I wanna see it in his ass."

Then she turned her head, beautiful tears in her eyes. "D, please…"

"You want me to play with your ass?" Diana asked, noticing peripherally, that Peter was having a hard time making Neal leave off his cock.

El answered by simply lifting it up, arching her back, tilting her sweet asshole up for Diana's use. Drool collected under Diana's tongue. Such a fuckable bottom, petal-soft and cherry-blossom pale.

She grabbed the bottle of lube but couldn't help first opening up a plump cheek with the other hand and teasing the clenched tight hole with the tip of her tongue. El immediately relaxed it on a moan, and Diana lapped just inside. El started rocking back into her face, and Diana almost couldn't stop. It was too good. But she uncapped the lube, got her tongue out of El's ass, and fingered some slick into her asshole. Then she aimed the gelatinous, tapered head of the smooth plug at El's spasming entrance. She didn't drive it home. She just turned the dial and got the thing vibrating on medium, tickling, licking, and teasing El's little hole with just the slick tip.

El cried out, long and loud. Finally, Peter had shoved Neal's head off his dick. Diana vibed El's butt and watched Peter pull Neal up, grab him under the ass and lift him. Neal immediately wrapped lean legs around Peter, holding himself up on Peter's shoulders with shaking hands. Neal's red cock got trapped between their bodies, and Peter's dripped, wanting back into Neal's hole.

Diana reached in between El's legs and started in on her clit again, pressing the plug an inch inside her now. El panted, Diana was sweating, and Peter aimed his erection at Neal's hole, forced open already by the positioning, legs spread, clinging, shaking. Then Peter released some of the arm strength it was taking to keep Neal lifted up, and at the same time thrust his hips, sinking his towering cock in one brutal maneuver up inside Neal.

"Jesus Christ, Peter," Neal breathed, eyes wide.

Diana started working the butt plug in and out of El, staying shallow where all the nerve bundles bristled and sang under the onslaught. She timed her fucking with Peter's and kept at the clit, too.

El was so breath-taking before her. She rode the plug and moaned. Her hair was starting to cling her to sweat-soaked back in waves. Diana felt the lust collect between the lips of her own needy cunt, felt the barbarous thing want free out her fly, her clit already buzzing with just the idea.

"You know what I want," she told her. Peter was bouncing Neal on his cock now, and the younger man was pleading. Diana could actually see where the thick root opened him time and again. He was well-lubed, so it plunged easily, even as it stretched the battered hole impossibly wide.

El was beyond an answer, Diana knew. She withdrew her fingers from the throbbing clit, and got her jeans undone with shaky, wet fingers. The dildo sprang out of the fly, and Diana had to lube it with one hand. When it was ready, Diana put the plug temporarily aside, lined up with El's pussy, turned the vibration to medium, feeling the electricity rage at her clit, and slowly pushed it in.

"Ohpleaseyes!" El groaned. She lay her body out then, cheek turned to the rumpled sheet, arms stretched out before her in complete supplication to Diana's fuck. Diana's clit leapt at the sudden stimulation, and she had to turn it down or she was going to come before the first real thrust.

When she had it lodged inside, and El was begging her to move, Diana picked up the plug again, and turned its vibration on, too. Then she aimed it, touched it to the greedy asshole, and slid it home, too, filling El completely.

"You…you…" El said. "You bitch." And Diana smiled at the intensity of arousal in her voice.

"Yeah," Diana admitted. And then she started to fuck, El's slippery pussy and her tight asshole, both. The coordination it took helped stave off Diana's own impending orgasm, which was good, because she wanted to make El come again first, and she wanted it to last long enough that El was begging her to make it stop.

Peter had Neal's back against the wall, his hole full. "Oh shit," he said suddenly. "Neal… Hold still. Hold still…" And then he came, shuddering, fucking, sweating, and pounding poor Neal into the wall. El groaned, and Diana kept the dildo deep inside, gyrating, turning the power up, reaching around and flicking El's clit like both their lives depended on her coming in the next sixty seconds. She couldn't make it last any longer. She needed to come. She needed El to lose it under her. The sight of her filled up from behind was almost enough all on its own.

Peter was still moving in Neal in aftermath, and with the plug shoved hard up her butt, and Diana's thick dildo rutting in and out, Diana's fingers wild between her legs, El stilled, arched, breath held, and then she groaned her release, head thrashing.

Diana sighed, overcome with the beauty of it, this exquisite woman moving against her, clamping hard, sliding on the dildo and trembling.

She let it go. Diana felt the build, the horrible tension, and then she came, yelling it out, still riding El's backside, getting off both on the vibration and on the pounding her clit took every time the dildo buried itself in El's soft sheath.

Peter pulled out of Neal, his dick now half-flaccid, done. He let Neal down slowly, gently, the tears spilling over his beautiful, male lover's lashes. Diana slowed her strokes, coming down herself. El looked nearly comatose for a minute. Diana removed the plug and got a delightful little whine. She pulled out of her cunt slowly, and El gasped. She smoothed her hand over El's rosy bottom, and El wiggled and then eased over into her side. Diana could fall in love with the way her breasts fell together, the way her thighs rubbed and her back expanded with her breath.

Neal whimpered. "Peter…I can't…"

And that's when Diana realized he was the last to need to come. He was an animal for it, now, his poor cock purple like a bruise, his whole body shining with his own and Peter's sweat.

"On the floor," Peter said, so lovingly it hurt Diana's heart. El looked at her then, standing there with her black dildo hanging out of her jeans. She cocked her head, gesturing for Diana to join her on the bed. Diana, weak for a bossy femme, stripped off the rest of her clothes and the strap-on, too, and then crawled up behind El, pressing their bodies together.

El hummed in pleasure, and took Diana's arm, wrapping in around her curves. They both watched now as Neal laid on the floor by the bed, and Peter lowered himself down over him, dwarfing him. Their mouths met, and El shivered. Peter's tongue stroked through Neal's mouth with the tenderness of someone no longer urgent with his own physical desire, only focused now on giving, releasing, on bringing his Neal off finally.

He dipped his head to a nipple, teeth tugging it into his mouth, and Neal arched up into it hard. El pulled Diana's hand to cup her breast. The weight of it was exquisite, the skin soft as sky. Peter kissed down Neal's svelte torso. "Arms up," Peter insisted when Neal tried to urge his head down.

But Peter went there anyway. He held Neal's jumping cock with his hand and enveloped the head in his mouth. His cheeks hollowed as he worked, humming, some of Neal's overflow of juice working its way out over Peter's bottom lip.

Neal practically sobbed Peter's name, then God's, then Peter's again. Diana could have sworn Peter smiled around Neal's dick. All it took then was a few bobs of Peter's head, Neal's lean, sculpted butt coming up off the floor to help, a gasp from El, and then Neal was shooting into Peter's mouth.

It was almost beautiful enough to make Diana fall in love with him, too. Almost. She could tell El already was, in her way. Peter was long gone. The sweat on Diana's stomach, pressed to El's back, had started to itch. She pulled away.

Peter slurped off Neal's cock, licking around his slit playfully, lovingly. "Shit, stop it," Neal groaned around a laugh. El laughed, too. Peter joined. Diana kissed El's lower back as she scooted down the bed and then off. She grabbed up her clothes and made for the bathroom.

She dressed quickly and was on her way out when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked disheveled, debauched. She looked unaccountably sad.

When she joined them, Neal was the only one still naked. Peter was pulling a t-shirt down, smiling at El, saying something under his breath, and Neal was holding him from behind, bare and clingy and Peter seemed to not mind in the slightest. El touched Peter's face, kissed him, laughed. Everybody turned to look at Diana as she exited the master bath.

El came to her immediately, taking some of the nameless sting from her insides. She wrapped her in soft arms used to care-taking. The hands were of a sex pot, though, and one of them squeezed her ass rather hard.

"Cocktails, popcorn, and disaster movies," she said. Diana wanted to check her watch but refrained.

"Sure" she said. And it was fine. It really was. They laughed and ate. There wasn't much snuggling, except for El grabbing Neal and eating her popcorn out of his bowl with her head on his shoulder. Diana felt like a misaligned fourth wheel in their cozy threesome.

She felt Peter's eyes on her during "Deep Impact". Both El and Neal were fighting sobs and holding hands. She met Peter's eyes. She saw him working it all out. He frowned a little. Not angry with her. He was…sad for her. He knew. And he understood. He gave her a small nod. "Anybody want pizza heated up?" Everybody raised their hand, and El gave him a kiss on his way to the kitchen.

Full of pizza, popcorn, cocktail rejected since she planned on driving, Diana felt the lump build in her throat as she stood to announce her departure.

"But it's only…" El looked at the clock on the mantel. "Oh." It was 2am.

"My flight's at nine," Diana told them. They all nodded. But Peter was the one to walk over to her, put his arms around her, and hold her tight.

She tried her best not to cry, and she succeeded. But she held onto Peter, too, like he was some kind of anchor to a reality she was desperately trying to get back to. One where she wasn't falling in love with his wife.

Peter's hand on her lower back was like a balm, warm and supportive. Diana wanted to be able to convince herself that she could stay. That her life in D.C., half-empty as it was, could be forfeited, and that she could assign herself a new life here. But even as it was Peter's arms that held a certain comforting promise of home, it was those same arms that reminded her of who she was. An agent of the FBI. Before everything else. It was what she loved most. Loved more than El. For now. Which is why she had to leave.

Neal hugged her hard after Peter let her go. His smile was an undeniable thing. If patented, Diana felt sure it could cure diseases. She enjoyed the feel of his artist's hands holding her body close. She gave him a swat on the butt as he moved away.

"Nice," he enthused.

It was El's turn, and, surprised, Diana saw the sheen of tears in her eyes. "When do you think you'll be back?"

Diana sighed and shrugged noncommittally. "I'm not sure." She added lamely, "Work." If there was one word El knew and understood, it was that one. She nodded sadly.

They all moved toward the door like a flock of migrating birds. She said good-bye again, but Peter followed her out to her rental car.

"You gonna be okay?" he asked. His hand was warm on her arm.

She got her keys out. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah."

He nodded, not convinced, but he let her get in the car anyway. "Drive safe," he told her. She blew him a kiss. And he waved from the driveway, washed in her headlights, as she backed out and then drove away.

…

Three weeks later, the cherry trees bloomed. All at once. All around the city. And though she hadn't felt like much was going to lighten the load on her heart, the fragile, blushing petals did. She started taking her lunches in the park until the bees started plaguing her, then she moved to an outdoor café. El's claim on her thoughts wasn't gone, but it wasn't everything, either.

And then she broke a huge case. Two teams had been working on it for fifteen months. And Diana gave them the missing piece. She was in on the bust, and never before had she felt so accomplished. She even received a medal from the Deputy Director in a small ceremony. They gave her a raise and a new office with a view of, well, the DMV, but it was something.

She was also working on letting people in more, enough to have fostered a couple new almost-friendships. Cahill and Roberts took her out for margaritas after the bust, and she found herself laughing, enjoying their company. Cahill was going down to Duck Beach in two weeks with friends. It was a huge beach house. Did she want to come? She found that she did. She wanted more for herself.

And then one Sunday afternoon, she was browsing in Barnes and Noble. She had her grande latte with three shakes of cinnamon in one hand and she was perusing the lesbian smut aisle when her gaze fell on a short, curvy Latina…no, Hawaiian? absorbed in a copy of "Japanese Rope Bondage for Dummies". Diana was surprised that her throat went immediately bone-dry. Her pulse galloped away. She pretended to read the back of Best Lesbian Erotica 2008 and checked the woman out. In her non-book holding hand, she carried a CD by the Black Eyed Peas. The same one Diana had on in her car. She almost didn't dare hope.

Near terror, but schooling it away as she'd been trained to do, Diana approached. "I like Rope Binding 101," she said, scanning the rack. "Here," she said, and the woman didn't hesitate to put her book down and take it with a glorious smile. "Page fifty-six is really good," Diana added, aiming for bold but not creepy. To underline the fact that she wasn't creepy, she decided to saunter away, leaving the woman with the honey-colored skin and bright brown eyes to think what she would.

Her insides were a riotous frenzy. She wound up buying a copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for no good reason. She was headed out to the car, elated and disappointed both, when the woman came running out to catch up with her.

"Hey!" she shouted. She was carrying a bag. Diana could see through it. She'd bought the book. Diana smiled.

…

They'd gone for coffee. They'd gone off-road biking, a first for Diana. They'd gone to dinner. And again. And a couple more times. The woman liked comic books, Kung-Fu movies, the Rolling Stones, and Thai food. Diana liked everything but the Kung-Fu movies, but she found that she liked the way the woman's laugh filled her living room watching them.

They'd used the book. They were wonderfully compatible. The woman's name was Alison.

Diana hadn't seen the Burkes in nearly three months. She was clearing out a drawer for Alison, wine chilling in the fridge, when the phone rang.

"D?"

El's voice was, temporarily, devastating. In the next second, it was exciting. Another second, and it was a relief, a comfort, a stirring happiness inside Diana's chest.

"El!" she exclaimed, putting down a handful of socks.

"It's so good to hear your voice," El sighed. For the briefest of moments, Diana pictured her on her hands and knees, plump ass open, sighing in pleasure. She looked at the socks, and remembered her last Saturday night, and Alison. Alison who cooked the most amazing risotto ever. Who thought all of Diana's dumb jokes were hysterically funny. Who gave killer massages in the middle of the night. Who loved to be tied up and fucked until she cried.

"I've missed you," Diana said, but there was a smile in her voice.

"Me, too," El answered. There was a long pause. Then, "You haven't been back." A deep breath over the phone line. "We, uh… Is everything okay?"

Diana sat on the bed, in the middle of all her socks. She breathed there, staring at her own blushing reflection in the vanity mirror. "El…"

"You found someone," El said, and Diana heard warmth, regret, relief.

"Yeah," she said. She looked at the empty drawer in her dresser, thinking of six o'clock. "I did."

"I told you," El said. Tears swam in Diana's eyes, but she smiled.

"Yeah."

El breathed deeply. "What I'm going to ask you… It isn't even fair, D. I know it's not."

Diana felt her heart leap into her skull. "Yeah?"

"No," El said, then. "It's absolutely not fair to you. What's her name?"

Diana let it out in a rush. "I still love you, Elizabeth."

El's exhale on the other end of the line, her relieved laugh, told Diana everything.

"Tell her I love her!" she heard Peter yell from far away.

"Me, too!" was Neal.

El sniffed. "We love you, D." Then, "I'll miss you."

"Me, too," Diana told her.

Hanging up the phone was hard. Standing in her empty bedroom was hard. Diana walked over to the vanity, her eyes catching on a note Alison had written her a week ago, "Starving! Going for breakfast. Back soon, baby. Me." She picked it up, thumb brushing over the ink. She remembered El's arms around her, Peter's, even Neal's. She felt them all around her. And suddenly, it wasn't as hard as just the moment before.


End file.
